It is often desirable to package sheet material in roll form, and to provide a cutting mechanism as part of the package for severing the sheet material into desired lengths, depending upon intended use. It is quite common to package the rolls in boxes that are intended to be disposed of after the rolls have been depleted. Obviously any cutting mechanism employed as part of such a disposable box construction must be sufficiently economical to manufacture to justify its disposal along with the box.
A highly reliable and economically constructed cutter assembly is disclosed in copending application Ser. No. 959,853, filed on Nov. 9, 1978, now U.S. Pat. No. 4,210,043 and entitled CUTTING ASSEMBLY AND METHOD OF FORMING A TRACK THEREOF. The assembly covered in the '853 application includes an elongate track adhesively secured to an elongate box in which a roll of web or sheet material is packaged. A cutter slide is mounted for movement within the track, and the track includes both an active or cutting section, aligned with the web dispensing slot for receiving the web material to be cut over it, and an inactive, or storage section, extending axially beyond the web dispensing slot. To initiate the dispensing operation the cutter slide is positioned in the inactive section of the track as the web material is being fed out of the dispensing slot. Thereafter, when the desired length of material overlies the cutting section of the track, the cutter slide is moved across the web to sever it. In this construction the axial length of the box must be sufficient to accommodate both the cutting and storage sections of the track.
To maximize the number of boxes that can be displayed in a given shelf space it is very desirable to minimize the axial length of the box. This invention is an improvement over that covered in the above-referenced '853 application, and includes features which permit a reduction in the axial length of the box, as will be described hereinafter.